Disregard the new evidence

Whoopi Goldberg went off on “The View” Wednesday over backlash she has received for her comments on the rape scandal surrounding Bill Cosby.

“Here’s the deal: This is ‘The View’ and that was my opinion,” Goldberg said. “Not any of you threatening me or telling me you’re coming after me because you don’t like what I said is going to change the fact that no one has convicted him, he has not been arrested, and the bottom line is that’s the law–innocent, until proven guilty.”

No, that’s not the bottom line. It may or may not be evidence one way or the other, but it’s not any bottom line.

“We all have a very important role to play when it comes to abuse and rape,” Goldberg continued. “If it’s true the person has to be taken to nth degree of the world and punished; no one here thinks rape is good, no one here thinks rapists are fun… so don’t come after me like that because I’m sick of this bull.”

She concluded the American court system agrees with her because Cosby hasn’t been taken to jail or even tried: “So back off me!”

Ah no, that’s not true. The fact that Cosby hasn’t been tried doesn’t mean the US court system thinks he didn’t rape anyone. There’s a (very short) statute of limitation for rape in the relevant states, so Cosby can’t be prosecuted. That’s far from equating to prosecutors’ thinking he didn’t rape.

And new evidence keeps coming out, so it’s silly of Whoopi Goldberg to get so furious with people who think she’s wrong.

Comments

Some people believe innocent-until-proven guilty means actual innocence. It only means legal innocence. It doesn’t mean they didn’t do anything until they were proven guilty. That’s absolutely ridiculous.

Plus, it’s not as though the private citizens using their free speech to CRITICIZE Cosby and his apologists are using the power of The State to deprive him of Liberty without Due Process.
“innocent until proven guilty” does NOT mean “shut up unless/until there’s a conviction in a court of law”, it only means The State can’t imprison him without going through Due Process.
I really don’t get why this is so damned hard for people like Goldberg and all the other hyper-skeptic rape apologists to grasp. OK, actually I do get it…they are, as usual (as always), far more about “shut up wimmenz, that’s why!” than keeping the government from abusing its power. If it’s the status quo enabling the already powerful members of their tribe to abuse women (in this case), they’re all for it.

At the same time, I’m appalled that Ms Goldberg is getting threats over saying stoopid sh*t to defend a rapist. I just…don’t have enough even to can’t at this point. It’s almost as though threats and harassment are the objective and the content of the comments they’re putatively responding to is irrelevant. Whocouldaknode?

@iknklast: Beyond ridiculous. I mean, it doesn’t even really mean legal innocence either (the law does not recognize the concept of “innocence”). It’s just a shorthand way of describing who has the burdens of proof and persuasion in a case. For me, this is right up there with “free speech” in the category of legal-terms-that-get-thrown-around-smugly-by-laypersons-who-have-no-idea-whatsoever-what-they’re-saying.

I really don’t get why this is so damned hard for people like Goldberg and all the other hyper-skeptic rape apologists to grasp. OK, actually I do get it…they are, as usual (as always), far more about “shut up wimmenz, that’s why!” than keeping the government from abusing its power. If it’s the status quo enabling the already powerful members of their tribe to abuse women (in this case), they’re all for it.

It’s not quite that it’s hard for people to grasp because there is a mix in the “they” spanning rapists malevolently and consciously working in public in their own interest all the way to family members of likely rapists who are uneasy about rape, people who worry that they may have technically committed rape and people socially receptive to the previous three. It’s also that they:

*Choose not to grasp it (fear or hate rape as a topic and will not engage with it and by extension you).
*Choose not to address it (they have grasped it and still will not engage)
*Unconsciously avoid it (motivated reasoning affect the flow of what they pay attention to)

…and other things. It’s a mess because “hyper-skepticism” is a social strategy due to a failure or omission of reasoning, conscious or unconscious. The goal is in maintaining how their personal interactions tend to work, including the power differences. That’s why I tend to think about these things in terms of conflict strategy.

It’s “interesting” that similar groups fear women and government (unless they are the de facto government).

“Innocent until proven guilty” only applies in the court room, anyway. The presumption of guilt is the default one if there is evidence to support it, outside of court. If it weren’t that way, nobody would ever be arrested. We fairly presume Cosby to be guilty of rape based on multiple, independent first-hand victim accounts, and now, additionally, based on his own testimony that he drugged women in order to rape them.

There was also her execrable comment on the Polanski case, saying it wasn’t “rape-rape” to assault a 13-year-old girl who said no but had been drugged into immobility. She’s clearly got a serious blind-spot when it comes to Hollywood; she seems to believe that celebrity is a pass to forgive all sins. It’s a shame, because it does so much damage to her image, which was, up until recently, one of challenging the status quo and succeeding despite not fitting the usual models.

She’s clearly got a serious blind-spot when it comes to Hollywood; she seems to believe that celebrity is a pass to forgive all sins.

This is like the science/skeptical community who rally around their own. They have “done so much good”. We aren’t being “properly skeptical”.

And it is identical to the tendency of the Christian community to circle the wagons around their own. It isn’t unusual for a congregation to turn on the victim following an abuse allegation.

I tried to explain this to JT, that he was acting just like the Catholic church in his dismissal of the problem in the atheist community (while trumpeting every Catholic priest abuse scandal based on no more, and often less, evidence than involved with our own abuse accusations). I don’t think he heard me.

I don’t get it. Are Goldberg and other apologists simply stuck on “he’s Cosby, and Cosby is a role model (TM)”? If this were John Travolta or Mel Gibson or Samuel L. Jackson would they be so vociferous in their defense? I mean, Cosby was pretty damn funny (and who didn’t like I Spy?), but that doesn’t get him off the hook for rape.